The depth of talent at lightweight, already bleeding into junior welterweight, has been apparent for several years. 

Before 2023, we were only getting hints of what that depth could mean.

Teofimo Lopez’s upset of Vasyl Lomachenko was a hint followed by a long layoff and Lopez being stunned by George Kambosos. Devin Haney’s twin wins over Kambosos announced the arrival of a champion, but confirmed Kambosos didn’t really belong on the tier everyone was most interested in. The big houses being drawn by Gervonta Davis hinted at a superstar but left the question of when the real other halves of the superstar marquee would arrive.

This week it was announced former featherweight titlist and lineal junior lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson (20-0, 10 KO) will face Frank Martin (18-0, 12 KO) in a fight for the interim WBC title. While it won’t be the biggest lightweight fight of the year, it may be one of the most significant for fans in the context of its time. 

The fight on its own is rock solid. Stevenson will be favored to win but it’s the sort of match that is worth watching to see what we don’t know about both men. Both are in their 20s and neither has found their ceiling as a professional yet. That’s what competition is all about.  

What it means beyond that is that we’re past the hinting stage. 

This year, fight fans have been treated to Haney-Lomachenko, Davis-Ryan Garcia, Lopez’s return to prominence at junior welterweight defeating lineal king Josh Taylor, and now this clash of consensus top ten lightweights. There are still plenty of showdowns we haven’t seen, but it feels like we’re at the point in deep eras where there’s nowhere left to go but into the sorting.

It’s taken time to get to this point.

The sorting will take time as well.

Things used to happen, broadly speaking, quicker in some previous eras but fans have grown accustomed to waiting the last couple generations. Previous sortings have worked out fine. Let’s look at one in particular.

In the 1990s, there was an extended wait for the showdowns fans wanted at welterweight. By mid-1994, the division’s top three titlists were Pernell Whitaker, Felix Trinidad, and Ike Quartey. When Oscar De La Hoya arrived in the division in 1997, he went straight to Whitaker and joined Trinidad and Quartey as undefeated champions with Whitaker there as the valued veteran. 

The era didn’t pop off right away even with the arrival of a rainmaker like Oscar.

It wasn’t until 1999 that we saw the foursome provide fans an unofficial tournament with De La Hoya-Quartey and Trinidad-Whitaker leading to a De La Hoya-Trinidad later in the year.

While that last fight might have been disappointing, the other two were not and in the bigger picture 1999 unlocked a wave of fights that carried boxing for several years. Shane Mosley joined the mix at welterweight while Quartey and Trinidad moved up the scale into a weight class with David Reid and Fernando Vargas waiting. Before long, Felix Trinidad gave way to the full arrival of Bernard Hopkins. Vernon Forrest, the mercurial Ricardo Mayorga…those are just some of the names that would factor in the spillover from 1999.

The seeds were planted in the mid-90s. The reaping didn’t truly begin until years later and then kept paying off because there was too much talent for it not to.     

The seeds for what we’re seeing now at lightweight and junior welterweight were planted prior to COVID as the names Davis, Garcia, Lopez, and Haney began to be linked together. Those names are now joined by Stevenson and Martin…and Gary Antuanne Russell, William Zepeda, Raymond Muratalla and…

When fights like Stevenson-Martin start getting made, we’re in the space where good fights start forcing great events in the abundance fans most desire and generations start getting defined.      

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com